of her shoulders and one hip. She stretched her lips into the softest smile and then opened sleepy, heavy eyes.
“God!” groaned Jake. He bit his tongue to stop articulating his need so blatantly. He imaged that look—sultry, seductive, rip-your-heart-out-hot—was for him. The editor gave him a curious look and moved away, and Jake was glad he’d had enough presence of mind to check the swear word he’d wanted to utter. He thanked heaven Trish Reed had instilled a veneer of good manners in him.
“Perfect,” said the photographer. “Hold that.”
They shot another half dozen poses, each one sexier than the last, a blistering barb sent to test his patience. He couldn’t get Rielle out of here quick enough. While she was changing, the photographer let him see the shots on her computer. He struggled to maintain any semblance of composure. Rielle seemed to be reaching out of each frame and into his heart.
“Did you like that?” she asked when she had dressed again and joined him.
“No,” he rasped. “It was torture.”
She laughed, and it was musical, and like everything about her—driving him mad.
They made it back to the hotel in record speed, trying not to give their driver too much reason to be watching them and not the road. Not succeeding. They all enjoyed the ride.
In Rielle’s big suite there was no turning back, no hesitation and no second thoughts. They came together like fire on ice, scorching, shocking, stinging and melting each other. Rielle’s sharp breaths and high whimpers made Jake all but lose it before they’d even undressed. He couldn’t remember ever being so desperate, so short on control. He was sick with it. Bent all out of regular shape and normal behaviour.
This was happening. Really happening. He’d get to learn Rielle though her body. He’d get to love the rock star and the real girl inside the performance.
And she wanted it as badly as he did.
His touch made her tremble so fiercely her knees collapsed under her, but he held her tight and scooped her up, carrying her the short distance to the bed and throwing her down on it.
“What do you want?” He stood over her, fumbling in the darkened bedroom with the catch on her shoe, his voice tense, crackling with excitement. When he’d asked her that in the car, he’d never expected to end up here. Now he was mad from expectation.
“Everything.” She lifted her shirt over her head, snapping the hook on her bra.
Perhaps it was the build up, the anticipation running too high. Perhaps it was just not meant to be. After the steamy promise of their play, their lovemaking was tight, anxious and unsettled. They had no rhythm together or sense of each other’s need.
Once they lay together, in the light-starved luxury of the suite, there was a distant, fretful quality to Rielle’s movements that Jake could not break through. She closed her eyes to him, turned her head and went somewhere else and he couldn’t find a way to bring her back. Not stroking her beautiful body, not speaking softly, not calling her name. She checked out on him, and it was devastating.
It confused him, made him angry. He changed his approach, got a little firmer with her, a little less gentle. He worked a little harder, and felt her body respond, moving with him, rising to him, opening and folding around him. But her mind stayed closed. All her earlier vocalisation fell silent, smothered somewhere, kept from him. It made him worried about hurting her, not loving her right, not pleasing her. It made him conscious and deliberate when he’d wanted to be lost.
“Where are you?” he said, bearing down on her, feeling her glorious heat, but not the light of her mind. While her body thrashed under him, her soul was locked tightly away. He might have been anyone. She might have been anywhere. She wasn’t here with him. All that remained, writhing in his hands, was a facsimile of her presence.
He tried not to care, to take his pleasure selfishly. And he was so worked up, so primed and she was so incredibly sexy, it was easy to do. But it wasn’t what he wanted. It was fraught and cheap, and as meaningless as any encounter he could have any night on tour, with one of a dozen girls backstage.
And that would’ve been more fun.
Gone was the provocative rock diva, the sultry songstress, the celluloid siren and the sex kitten who’d had him acting like an impatient teenage